Blish,James – And all the Stars a Stage

do.

The Director smiled frostily, and ended the mutual inspection with a

peculiar writhing gesture of his whole visible body, as though he bad

flexed all of his great anomalous muscles at once. As a warning? Or was it

simply some titanic equivalent of a shrug? Jorn found it impossible to

tell, especially since the Director was the only person in the room except

Dr. ChaseHuebner who was not wearing the odd coverall, which Jorn was now

quite certain was a uniform. Instead, be wore a loose-fitting kind of

smock, fastened only at the collar and the wrists, which allowed the

strange muscular convulsion ample play without revealing enough of its

details to permit Jorn to interpret it.

But at the very least, Jorn was abruptly surer than ever that be was out of

his depth. Perhaps that was all that the Director had intended. If so, it

was thoroughly convincing.

“I suppose you have realized, Mr. Birn,” the Director said at last, “that

this is essentially a project in space research. I don’t of course know at

what point in the tests this occurred to you, but at least I observe that

you are still with us. So let me ask you this: are you still interested in

the job?”

His voice, a light tenor astonishing in so big a man -or was he indeed so

big?-at first rather distracted Jorn from the substance of what he was

saying; and

And all the Stars a Stage 33

then, Jorn found the question itself very hard. Finally he said:

“I think so, sir. I wouldn’t be interested in any of the ordinary projects

in space research that I hear about in the press- I’m, well, not quite